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by R.J. Carter Published: January 1, 2002
So how did the young Gareb Shamus pull off this feat and assume such an influential role in the funny books biz? And what does he have planned for the future? We could conjecture about such things, but I found it a whole lot easier to just call him up and ask him directly... It’s obvious that you’re a zealous fan of comics. Were you always that way? Were you a “comic geek” growing up? Believe it or not, I was more of a sports card geek growing up. But then what happened was... I have three brothers, so we grew up collecting sports cards. And then, probably twenty years ago or so, we got so big into sports cards that my parents decided to open up a store. When we opened up the store, we were like, we just can’t put sports cards in there, we’ve got to do sports cards and comic books and other things. That’s when my parents put comic books into their stores, and that’s when I started reading them. Once I could get free comic books, it was very easy to become hooked and addicted to them. And then I had more than all my friends. What prompted you to decide to begin publishing Wizard? After all, everybody knows there’s no money to be made in publishing! Well, there is money to be made in publishing. (Laughs) Let me start off by saying that. When I was in college, I used to sell advertising for our school newspaper, and we were non-profit but I made a lot of money for them selling ads. So we outfitted the whole newspaper with desktop publishing, with Macintoshes right when they first came out. So I became an expert in desktop publishing on the Mac. Also while I was at college, my parents would send me a stack of comics every week, and, at the time, to me, it was like a really exciting time! McFarlane was really getting started, and there were a lot of things going on. But being up at school, I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know what artists and writers were working on what books. I didn’t know what characters were going to be anywhere. I felt like I was totally out of the loop. And, I didn’t know what my stuff was worth because, you know, Overstreet came out once a year and there was really nothing that addressed the new market and nothing that really told me what was coming out, what was new, and what was exciting. That’s when I came up with the idea for Wizard. I could merge what I knew about publishing--which at the time I thought was a lot, but it was really nothing--and my love for comic books, and wanting to bring it a whole new class up in the business. In the past, there had only been black and white things, and it’s really a very colorful business. But yet, there was nothing that brought comic books to the level where it brought it out of that “mom & pop”thinking. I really wanted to make it a very exciting industry to the outside world, and the only way to do that was to really do it in a fun and exciting way. What’s the origin of the name, Wizard? The name of my parents’ store is called Wizard World. So what happened was, while we were thinking of the name for the magazine, we were like, “Hey, let’s just call it Wizard!” As it turns out, it was my dad’s birthday one year and... We had been friendly with McFarlane early on, back when he was in his Hulk days. We used to fly around all over the place to buy his original artwork. So he knew my dad really well. So for my dad’s birthday that year, we commissioned him to do an original Spider-Man piece. And because of the store, he did Spider-Man in this wizard’s outfit. That image actually pre-dates the magazine by about two or three years. So when we decided to do the magazine, it was like... “Hey, we have this incredible Spider-Man image in the wizard outfit, and we’re going to call the magazine Wizard.” One thing led to the other, and we started the magazine. I remember for a long time every cover used to have the purple-and-stars image somewhere in it. Yeah, the purple cape and stuff. And then publishers got a little quirky about putting the costume on their characters and stuff, so it was just easier to do it without it. When did you realize you had a success on your hands with Wizard? I realized it before it actually turned into it. It was probably around issue number 10. What had happened was, we started out fairly strong but sales started decling--you know, the natural progression down. But then what had happened was, we had issues 10, 11 and 12 coming out. And I was able to line up Rob Liefeld for 10, McFarlane for 11 and Jim Lee for 12. It was around the time that Image was coming out, also. So here you had the three biggest names in the business. They were all leaving Marvel to create their own company, and I’d been trying for a year-plus to get them all to do another cover for us. So all of a sudden, I had the three biggest guns in the industry all in a row. So I knew that we had to do something big to make sure that for those three issues we got people so hooked on our book that they needed to be there for the next one. If you remember, issue ten was the first one that had the trading cards in it. We put the Youngblood 0 gold card in there. And that’s when everything started. We needed to develop a program with the magazine that for issue 13, when there was no Jim Lee, McFarlane or Rob Liefeld on the cover, that we were going to have a magazine that people had to have. So we started those trading cards, so people needed that fourth card in the series to continue their collection. So it was a great way to get people not only to buy the first three issues, but then each one after that. Wizard has branched out into other collectible genres: ToyFare, Inquest, the Black Bull comics line. Are you worried about overextending yourself? No, as long as we don’t try to do too much all at the same time. The beauty of the publishing business is there’s actually a lot more efficiency, the more you do. You always have to do a great job, because if it’s not successful, then it hurts you. But when I have to do another magazine, I don’t need to hire another me, I don’t need to hire a whole new accounting department, I don’t need to hire a whole new circulation and distribution department. So the start-up costs of an additional magazine are actually a lot less relative to the prior ones, because there’s a lot of built-in efficiencies that you don’t have to re-create. The second component of that is actually being able to hire great people. When you have great people that can manage things, that’s the key to it. You can’t do everything yourself. You have to make sure that you can empower people to make decisions and do a great job, and we’ve done a great job of making sure that we have great people that can do it. So it’s not me overextending myself, it’s really growing an organization that can manage to do a lot more than any individual independently. But also, if you notice, a lot of the areas that we’re going into take advantage of either the position that we have or our ability to leverage our existing infrastructure. Take the convention business. If I just owned the convention and I had to make that a success, it would be very difficult. But because we already talk to artists and writers and the companies--we’re already talking to them about a lot of things! To talk to them about one more thing is another natural ability that we can have. But if I had to go out and hire a whole new staff that just had to worry about calling all those companies, then it would be very difficult. Also the same with advertising and promoting the show. If I had to find out where to get all the people to come to the show, or to find out where they are and then promote and advertise to them, it would be very difficult. But because I have Wizard, I have my own ability to promote the show through my own vehicle, and therefore have it be a success the way it would be very difficult for somebody else to make it a success. When you look at the businesses that we’re in--all the business we’re in are exactly the same in regards to our ability to use what we’ve built in the past to make it successful in the future. Whether it’s the convention, or Black Bull, or Toy Wishes, or the Internet company... you take any one of those, they all leverage off of our existing business. Speaking of Black Bull. Boy, what a controversy that stirred up! Now that you have Gatecrasher off and rolling, you’re following up with Garth Ennis’ “Just A Preacher.” (Laughing) Just A Pilgrim! Don’t get me into trouble here! (Laughing) You know, I have “Pilgrim” written down here, but I had Preacher in the back of my brain. And that’s a good thing. I don’t want you to stop thinking that... but you can’t say it. What’s going on with that book? Well, our first issue is coming out next week and people in the office have their first editions, which I haven’t seen yet, but it’s great! Look, Garth Ennis is unbelievable. He has such a following. He’s just incredible, what he does is just great. And to be able to get him to work with us is just awesome. But I’m not trying to do a lot of books. I don’t want to do a lot of books. It’s very hard to do a lot of books and do them all really well. And as McFarlane has shown, if you can do one book really great, it’s a lot better than trying to do three books or ten books or twenty books mediocre. If you can focus your energy on one thing and do it great, it’s infinitely better. So I only want to do things that are great. I’m not looking to do a lot of stuff. I only want do things that I enjoy, or that I want to do and work with people that I want to work with, and not put any pressure [on myself] that I have to come out with books all the time or I can’t pay the bills. I’ve set it up so that we can do it, first of all, when the product is ready to go, and then ultimately the project that we want to do. We have a book that’s coming out later in the year that we’ve spent over a year and a half in development on it. People think of an idea, and then they’ve got a book out two months later. We’ve spent a year and a half developing the next one that comes out after Just A Pilgrim. (Laughs) But you’re not going to tell me what it is, are you? You know... I might. I think I will tell you. It’s called Shadow Reavers. That’s a very dark sounding title. Yeah, it’s a horror/fantasy title. Who do you have lined up for that? It’s actually written by two people from Wizard, Pat McCallum and Mike Ceril. Nelson DeCastro is doing art with a guy named Greg Luzniak and Doug Wheatley. So that’s the next one. But we’ve spent a lot of time to make sure that when we do it, it works, that it’s a great concept, it has great characters. Once you’ve developed the concept and the characters, then the story flows, and you can come up with an infinite number of stories that work. But this one in particular is really exciting. One of the other things--being in the comic industry and reading comics growing up--in addition to doing the magazine, I’ve always wanted to do my own comic book. For me, the question was when the timing was right for it. Because it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do. Clearly, because of my position in the comics industry, I have the access to the talent, to the whole distribution and printing and all that part of the business. So it was just a matter of when, and I kind of woke up one day and we were approaching Wizard 100 and I said to myself “I can’t believe that I’ve done a hundred issues of Wizard and haven’t come out with a comic yet.” So then I knew it was time. But you have been putting out some comics before, though, in conjunction with other companies. With the Wizard #1/2 and #0 special issues, and now the Black Bull titles, how does Wizard maintain the proper objectivity when including these books in its price guide? We treat our own products the way we treat everything. We do thousands of surveys every single month with retailers and with consumers. We monitor the online sources. All the offline sources. That’s what we do. With us being in the position that we’re in, we have to be true to our consumers, and the minute we’re not true to our consumers, they’re going to stop buying our product. When you look at the trend of our sales relative to the comic book industry, we’ve done a great job of keeping people excited about our product and trying to keep them excited about the industry. But the minute our consumers sense that we’re not being true to them--that we’re telling them something that’s not true that they think is true, or vice-versa--that’s when they’re going to stop buying our magazine. Our goal is always to be true. So whether the products that we have are higher or lower in value is less meaningful than Wizard being a success or not. Wizard has to be successful. So I’m not going to give up Wizard being successful to try to figure out how to pull anything over on our consumers, because they’re very smart. They’re very savvy, and they’re going to know when we’re telling them something that’s not true, and we have no intention of doing that. In looking at recent issues, there’s another price guide in Wizard that I never really paid any attention to, because it didn’t apply to any books I had. That’s the CGC Price Guide. Is there a connection with Wizard and CGC? Yeah, there are a few connections with them. Number one, the concept--and there is a lot of controversy on this--but the concept of putting comic books into a sealed plastic so you can’t read your books anymore is really starting to come to the forefront. What I tell people is, no one is sitting there reading their $1000 or their $5000 book. If they want to read a book that’s expensive--guaranteed, there’s a reprint out there of it. So to me, it’s a crazy argument to say that your book is in a piece of plastic and now you can’t read it anymore. You aren’t going to read that book anyway, because the chance of you damaging it and ruining the value of it... Please! I tell people to leave me alone. The second thing is that--especially with the advent of being able to transact products on the Internet--when you want to buy something from somebody, and you don’t know who they are, and you don’t necessarily have to trust them or not. But you don’t know that what they think is Near Mint is what you think is Near Mint. So there needs to be some trusted third party out there, which you can say, “Hey, my Incredible Hulk #181 is an 8 out of 10.” So if you want to sell me that book, and I don’t know who you are, nor do I trust that you think it’s in whatever grade it is, but want to buy it, and I know that there’s a third party that says that book is an 8 out of 10, then I want it. Because I know what it is, sight unseen. I know what I’m buying. And that alone will help the commerce of products between two people that don’t know each other. If you’re a fan, and you want to fill in a run or you’re looking for a book, and you’re living in the middle of nowhere or you’re living in the big city, and you’ve exhausted every option to try to find the product that you’re looking for--you’ve been to every store; you’ve been to every convention (if you’re lucky enough to have one); you’ve been to some other places locally or you’ve been to your friend’s house--and you can’t find what you’re looking for, your only option now is the Internet. So now the whole world is open to looking for that product. But because it’s not local, you don’t have the luxury of going to see it before you buy it. This takes the whole concept of the condition of what you’re buying out of the equation. You can buy products now from people, sight unseen. And one of the relationships that we formed with them was to make sure that we are consistent with them and they are consistent with us on the grading of the scales, so that we make sure that... an issue that’s rated a 9.8 is a Mint book, so that we say that 9.8 is Mint. Or that 9.2 or 9.4 or whatever, is Near Mint. The worst thing that could happen is there be confusion in the market place as to what your letter grade is equivalent to, and the number grade. So we needed to make sure that there was a way in which people don’t get confused. What about people who are slabbing $20 books? The most obvious one being the recent copy of Spawn #1 that went for $800. What happens is, people want to know that they’re getting something that is the best that’s out there. They sold well over a million copies of Spawn #1. How many of those were actually in what somebody would consider a 10 condition? Just because you picked it right off the shelf, or right out of the box that it came in right from the printer, doesn’t necessarily mean that it was a 10. So what happens is, when you start grading comic books like that, all of a sudden it puts into scale the scarcity of a book in a particular condition. And then what happens is, because of the scarcity of the books in the much higher condition, they will fetch exponential prices. That’s not only happening on the new stuff, it’s happening on the old stuff, too. We’ve seen prices on a book like an Incredible Hulk #181 well over $1000. I think people can understand, in a sense, the old books doing that, but I think they have a problem swallowing $800 for Spawn #1. But you know what? There’s somebody out there that felt that that was something that was worthwhile. Just because $810 is a lot to you, doesn’t mean that it’s a lot to somebody else, so it’s all relative. Look, there’s some brand new sports cards that come out every day that are worth thousands of dollars. And they’re worth a lot more than some of the older Mickey Mantle cards and Tom Seaver cards and Nolan Ryan cards... they’re worth a lot more. And they’re brand new cards! They’re players that just came out! It’s an Alan Iverson card. It’s a Mark McGwire card. They’re brand new cards that have come out that are worth way more than the guys that dominated the sport for their lifetime. If people want it, and they’ve got the money... God bless America! Looking out over the Internet--you have many fans making themselves vocal on WizardWorld.com. But in other places, you’re probably the most hated man in the industry since Jim Shooter (which probably makes Jim rest a bit easier). Why? Your critics say Wizard is hurting the industry more than helping it, by catering to speculators and collectors. You see, you have people that would prefer that the comic book industry sold 3000 copies of comic books to a little club, and not the hundreds of thousands that comics today could sell. You take a look at the people that vote for the Eisner Awards. They would prefer that the industry were run by people that sell books in quantities of 3000 or less. And you know what? Believe me, there’s ample room for those people in the business. But the reality is that... there are a lot of people that are very excited about reading X-Men and Ultimate Spider-Man and Batman, and lots and lots of other products out there. Witchblade. Fathom. And, you know what? There’s a lot of people that want those books. So the people that say, “Speculators this-and-that...” The reality is... you tell me who are these people that are buying all these books, and then buying and selling them and making money? In every single collectible area there are people who buy and sell things to make money. Typically, they’re called “retailers” or “dealers.” And you know, if there are fans that are doing it... again, you tell me a person that bought a coin that wasn’t interested solely in the value. What attachment does somebody have to some 1898 silver dollar? None! They purely buy it for that. So, because somebody likes to collect or keep his or her stuff and are interested in the value of it--that’s great! That’s what collecting is all about. It’s about accumulating the things that you want, and for a lot of people, their collectibles are their equities. They chose to buy something called a comic book or a coin or a sports card, rather than buying a piece of paper that said “Microsoft” on it. So far a lot of people, this is their equities, and they’re very concerned whether they go up or down in value. But to say that we cater to speculators... please! We do a lot of information in the magazine and we do a lot to promote the industry. We do more than most. We try to make the industry fun and exciting for people, so they enjoy what they do. A new development at Wizard is the addition to the covers: “Not Recommended For All Ages.” What prompted this little bit of C.Y.A.? Why that particular phrasing, instead of something a little more specific, like, “Recommended for ages 14 and over,” or something similar? We needed to come up with some sort of labeling. What people lose sight of is that probably 90% of comic books are sold in comic book stores. But most of our distribution doesn’t occur in comic book stores. It’s either done through subscriptions or through mass-market. So we sell a lot of copies not in the hobby stores. And what typically happens is, when you see Superman or Batman on the cover, or you see Spider-Man, you’re average thought out in the mass-market is, “Hey, my son would like this.” And he’s 8 and he’s watching Batman Adventures or Superman Adventures or something else out there, and you look at our magazine and it looks like it’s a magazine for 12-year-olds or 14-year-olds, when in fact our average age is in the low 20s for Wizard. So what we have to do is, we have to produce a product that works for our demographic, and our core demographic is high teens, low twenties male. What invariably happens is there are going to be younger kids that buy our book, and parents could get offended by that. We’ve had an incident at a major retailer recently where a parent complained, and suggested that the best way to remedy it was to put some sort of warning on the cover that it’s not for all ages. But for us to determine what age is or isn’t appropriate is not our call. That’s for parents to decide. We just needed to come up with something that conveyed that, if you’re a parent buying this for a kid, you should consider what age your kid is before you purchase the book. A few years ago, Wizard pulled a takeover of the Chicago ComiCon. How did that come about, and what’s the latest scoop on this year’s festivities? Well, we had been friendly with Gary Calabuono for a long time, because of Moondog’s and being a retailer and just being an all-around great guy. They were having some problems with the convention, in that there were four partners in there. And the show grew organically--it grew out of a hotel room into a major convention center. And it became a major undertaking. It grew from being a small business into a much larger business that was beyond their ability to manage it the way it needed to be managed. So we discussed how it would be great if Wizard could take it over. We only had the San Diego show, and to lose Chicago as the number two show in the country would have been really tough for this business. Because we need as many outlets out there promoting comic books and getting people excited about the business. We didn’t want it to die. Clearly, we were going to be losing money taking it over. But for me, I saw it as a great opportunity for marketing. It was a great way for us to tell the world how great and fun--not only comic books are--but everything, like toys and gaming and anime and sci-fi and wrestling... just to tell the world that this is a great business and this is really exciting. So we took it over. We bought it. We’ve definitely sustained some losses in the first couple of years. And now it’s grown, and it’s awesome! It is so much fun to go to. We view it as one big party. And the show is not about us. It’s about the people that go there. It’s about the consumers, it’s about the manufacturers, it’s about the dealers; people go there for those people, not for me. We try to make a show that works for everybody. So regardless of whether we like somebody or we don’t like somebody, it doesn’t matter. If the fans are coming to see that person, we’re going to make sure that they get prominence there. The show is a ton of fun. But it’s a lot of work though. It’s important to make it be easy for people when they get there. |
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